For Love of Chips: Chipsounds Instrument and EP and the Gear That Inspired Them

Taste the rainbow of the Spectrum ZX home computer. Photo (CC) diebmx.

Call it the 8-bit preservation society. Chipsounds is now available. It’s a new programmable soft synth, filled with custom oscillators and samples of famous and obscure vintage chips, accompanied by an EP of free chip tracks. Far from a threat to fans of hardware, I think this release is a major achievement for fans of digital sounds.

Oh yeah, and if you’ve been feeling burnt out on chip music in general, firing up some of the sound of some of these more obscure chips could well change your mind. If you like sound, there’s something here for you.

Chip music, championed by a supportive network of artists and fans, has unquestionably made the big time. But for those who value the unique sounds of a variety of vintage 8-bit chips, there is still cause for concern. Even though they’re digital circuits, the unique design of various chips won’t last forever. Some chips are simply disappearing, while others cease to work. At the same time, while the sound of the Nintendo game system has become ubiquitous, lots of other unusual chips don’t get heard. Software emulation and sample packs so far have been pretty shallow. Emulators tend not to model all the nuances of different chips, and samples are really only expressive if they’re presented in the context of something that’s fully programmable and playable.

Something like Chipsounds could have been just an attempt to cash in on “what the kids are playing.” But David’s work is more like an epic love poem to the sounds of chips themselves, not only as a reminder of game music but as a unique sound source. And the passionate chip music community got in on the act, as well, with notable artists contributing to the product’s development and in fine form on the EP.

But forget about that for a second. What matters is that chipsounds is an exhaustive, exhaustively programmable set of sounds that almost no eBay budget could ever amass. It takes some unique sounds and allows you to warp them into arrangements and performance configurations not possible with hardware. And it might well make you explore hardware in a new way all over again.

For your listening pleasure, here is the full, free EP with downloadable tracks to set the mood. It’s all been made with Chipsounds by some terrific artists, including David Viens himself, and covers a range of genres and techniques.

Why Chipsounds

David has a really lovely intro in the manual for the tool. He’s got a story like many of us I expect have.

My father bought a Commodore VIC-20 for me and my brother when I was around nine. After a few days with it, I guess he knew I had found my calling. There is not a year that passes without me reminding him how bringing that computer home some cold autumn night changed my life.

But this isn’t just nostalgia. David also notes that some of the limitations imposed by earlier 8-bit hardware caused artists and musicians to invent new techniques that were later lost. These methods can now be rediscovered and coexist with new processes only possible with newer tech. What Chipsounds represents is an expanded “sonic palette,” not just the literal representation of the hardware included. And for those willing to dig into programming the sampling instrument itself, that palette can be even wider and more personal.

David did a whole lot of work on research and experimentation to make this work, but also drew upon the massive community online. Here’s a look at the chips included.

The Instruments

David did extensive research, testing, sampling, and A/B sound programming for the project. Just going through the chips is a nice history lesson – and could be a good introduction for those interested in working with hardware, too. You can check out extensive technical details on the hardware at the chipsounds blog.

The reason the Commodore 64 is prized by musicians is the SID chip inside. Here, a modded C64 built just for music, (CC) farnea = Audrey and Max.

SID (6581) and (8580) It’s the mother of all sound chips, and deserves the top space in this list. The SID was the legendary Commodore 64 chip, sampled in this collection at 96KHz. The 8580 I think doesn’t get nearly enough credit, so it’s nice to see both so you can hear the oddities of each.

RP2A03 (NTSC) and RP2A07 (PAL) and RP2A0X (unlimited): This is the big one – the chip in Nintendo’s NES and Famicom. It’s not actually a dedicated audio IC, but a clone of the 6502 CPU, but it still has some unique features and sounds.

Planning a set list on the Game Boy, with Nullsleep. Photo (CC) minusbaby.

DMG-CPU, SGB and DMG(unlimited) The classic: Nintendo’s own sound generator for its Game Boy handheld. Confession time: I’ve heard this chip so much that I’m starting to long for other things. But again, because the Chipsounds collection lets you create hybrid instruments in different ranges, there’s nothing stopping you from inserting DMG sounds where you wouldn’t expect. (And while functioning Game Boys are everywhere and run a variety of amazing homebrewed sequencing software, some of these other chips aren’t as accessible or portable.)

AY-3-8910 (various clocks sources), YM2149 (2Mhz): General Instruments’ sound chip was one of the great sound chips of the 8-bit gaming and computing age, found in the Intellivision, Vectrex, Atari ST, and Sinclair ZX, among many others. That means it’s critical not only to gaming fans, but also fans of the sounds in early tracking musicians, particularly on the Atari ST. It’s even got its own Wikipedia article.

D1867G The classic Casio VL-1 makes a surprise cameo in this collection. Result: you have the opportunity to imagine your own music console that combines the sounds of the VL-Tone with the IBM PCjr, and that’s a beautiful thing. The VL-1 may be the odd man out in this collection, but then, it also exemplifies the lo-fi digital sound of the 80s – and with the ARIA sampling engine, you can warp it to do things it has never done before.

P8244 (NTSC), P8245 (PAL) This is one of the rarer (or at least more unexpected) entries in the collection, the sound chip that drove the Magnavox Odyssey2. Intel’s Video Display Controller used this chip to make both graphics and sound (hmmm… could Chipgraphics be next?) For extreme nerding out, check out David’s full post on working with this chip. Unlike the other entries here, the VDC doesn’t have much documentation online for these kinds of applications.

POKEY (various clock configuration) Atari’s Doug Neubauer created sound capabilities for this chip, used in Atari’s 8-bit computers as well as many arcade games. (The POKEY actually handled not only audio, but keyboard, pots, timing, serial… Arduino fans, take note.) Which arcade games? Try Tempest, Gravitar, Gauntlet and Crystal Castles, for starters.

“Deadly Discs” can also refer to some of the more painful parts of my CD collection. Photo by Hobvias Sudoneighm.

TIA (NTSC), TIA (PAL) and TIA (unlimited) Another combined graphics and sound chip, the Television Interface Adapter was the sonic soul of the Atari 2600. The variations here in Chipsounds give you a lot of choices, including the awesome “polynomial counters” which create different kinds of distortion. Using keyswitching, you can choose among these sounds live, ideal for keyboardists. And David has even included the sounds the TIA makes when the cartridge was improperly inserted.

SN76489(AN) (various clocks) Here’s my personal favorite: the classic Texas Instruments sound chip was dead-simple (three square wave generators and one white noise generator), but elegant, efficient, and unique in sound. The BBC Micro, IBM PCjr, and ColecoVision game system all used its sounds. I can still hear the echoes of Subroc in my sleep. (Yeah, okay, I was a bit jealous of my friends who had Apple IIs and NES instead of the more oddball PCjr and Coleco I had, but now I’m older and appreciate them more.)

Side note: David was nice enough to share some of his SN chips, so I’m working on building them into standalone hardware and will share the results.

UVI 2637(NTSC) and 2637(PAL): Now we get into the chips you probably haven’t heard. Signetics made this chip for the Arcadia 2001 console developed by Emerson (yeah, the electronics company) in the heady year of 1982, before the meltdown that would purge the home gaming market. That console was widely cloned, under names like the Interton, Leisure Vision, and MPT-03.

How geeks and geekettes are born: buy them a machine like a VIC-20. (And a reminder that we need to introduce new generations to skills like programming.) Photo (CC) and featuring a very young Michael Surran.

VIC-I : 6560 (NTSC) 6561(PAL) in various configuration Here’s another oddball chip: the VIC-I, used in the VIC-20, had 7-bit pitch range, giving you oddly-tuned scales, plus a truly strange noise generator. That strange sound is rarely heard, but leave it to the demoscene to exploit it. From the Chipsounds manual:

In 2003, a brilliant demo writer by the name of Viznut reverse-engineered this side effect, mapping all possible “weird” waveforms that the chip was able to reproduce in a deterministic manner, and put the to good use in his now famous “Robotic Liberation” demo.

Here’s a look at that creation:

The Software

Let’s get something out of the way: I believe in synths. I’m naturally skeptical of samples. If I believed for a second Chipsounds was about plugging in some sampled sounds and hitting a key and waiting, I wouldn’t have posted this article. Fortunately, Plogue’s ARIA sampling-plus-synthesis engine is powerful enough to allow immense programmability and playability. It’s loaded up with programs that model every last detail of these instruments, while also providing the possibility to create your own, unique performance configurations. Samples make up just a portion of the sound, used where appropriate, with lots of custom oscillators and modulators, as well. This is really a full-blown instrument, not just a sample library. (ARIA has previously been sampling-only, but Chipsounds is the first of a line of instruments to use synthesis, as well.)

Standalone, plug-in modes:

As a plug-in, Chipsounds works with VST on Mac and Windows, RTAS (for Pro Tools) on Mac and Windows, and Audio Units on Mac. And of course, in plug-in mode you can automate all your parameters.

In standalone mode, you have additional features: audio file recording, MIDI file playback, and even the ability to render MIDI to audio directly.

Mixing, Multis:

Load up to eight chips/instruments per instance. (Each of those, in turn, can be made up of combinations of samples.) Maximum polyphony is suggested at about 4-5 voices for artistic reasons, but… rules are made to be broken, right?

Assignable tuning, polyphony, mix parameters

Reverb busing

Key switching, which allows you to change between waveforms immediately using a key on your keyboard

Snapshots

Sound editing:

Here’s where things get fun – and where you can do things more easily than you could with the original hardware. Even with the ARIA engine alone, you have a virtual studio of tools in which to place your samples.

Wave sequencer: This allows you to sequence lists of pitches on an instrument, allowing tracker-style events inside the software. (Add your own tracker to the mix and – well, things get pretty hectic.)

Live, high-performance oscilloscope.

Pitch LFO (currently fixed), pitch and amplitude envelope generators.

Effects, which currently includes only an ARIA-native port of the lovely Ambience reverb by Magnus Jonsson. (But then, the advantage of having these sounds on your computer is easy access to all your other effects.)

Still Want Hardware?

In order to make the Chipsounds collection, David spent time rigging quick hardware devices allowing the actual chips to be connected to a computer. That could make Chipsounds an affordable gateway drug into building your own standalone hardware with these chips as sound sources, as I hope to do soon with my TI SN’s. To get you started, check out the superb resources on the Midibox wiki:

The SID is the most common of these, but ironically finding working SIDs is getting to be much harder than finding these other unique, lovely chips.

I’m actually really interested in the possibilities of combining hardware with the open-source Arduino platform and creating devices that behave in new ways; stay tuned, and hopefully we can get a group of folks working on that.

One example – our friend little-scale aka Sebastian Tomczak of South Australia – has used the Arduino to connect to the SN chip and create a MIDI-controlled Sega Master System equivalent:MIDI + Arduino + chip on little-scale’s blog

Add in new MIDI capabilities on the Arduino, and this gets quite interesting.

If you’re interested in anything covered here – the artists, the chips and digital synthesis history, how to use the software, or how to make some of these hardware creations – all of these topics are fair game for CDM. I promise a non-nostalgic (okay, maybe slightly nostalgic), musical approach to these topics.

Howard – thanks for the reminder! Yeah, I really love those SuperCollider examples; I've played with them. The other nice thing about them is, whether or not they're a "perfect" emulation, they're a nice way to get introduced to SC, and you can change the code.

Somewhere around here, I have a handful of 6581 SIDs that I got in exchange for a case of Dr. Pepper. I had it in mind to build a polysynth with them, one chip per voice, but the task suddenly became a Herculean one. Of course, that was before the Arduino…

Also, keep in mind that I have no idea if they actually work or not. They were taken out of working C64s, that's all I can tell you. (I was given the actual computers, from which I stripped the useful stuff.)

Well the usual trick it so swap them on a real C64 and run a few tracks, watch for any missing sound or silent filter (filtered voices disappear completely). i have fully silent ones too. some with missing filters. They are very sensible ICs

Chad

I'm thankful someone did this and I'm going to buy it. I have no tremendous affection for the chiptune "movement" (although I did buy that "Kind Of Bloop" record), but I do love sound and textures of all types. So I'm down. Sold.

However, I have to say this product raises an interesting cultural question. Isn't there a risk with this sort of venture of… killing the cool?

Cool is a funny thing. Sociologists study it. There are many books about it.

One of the interesting aspects of the dynamic of cool is that it is predicated somewhat on being remote or aloof or difficult to access. With the introduction of this plug-in, I imagine some of the chiptune devotees will be dismayed simply because… it's actually really good. It's done well, it's done with heart, it's done exactingly and earnestly.

Which just makes the whole thing… not so cool?

Which is totally unfair and illogical. But that's the way cool works… it's often arbitrary and senseless.

Plogue seems at pains to defend against this expectation of dismay on the website. There is a "skeptical?" tag that seems to go to great lengths to address the (presumed onslaught of) "bloody murder" cryers/diehards.

From a sociological perspective, it's interesting. That's all I'm saying here. Presumably this is a venture that everyone who loves these tones should embrace and celebrate.

But me, I expect there it will invite snob derision. I might be wrong — I hope I'm wrong — but I don't think I am.

I don't care. I'm just a lover of sound. So I'm buyin' it and I say thank you to the people who worked so hard to create it.

1. Chip music has already spread to a wider group of people. In fact, it was as that community reached critical mass that they were able to support each other, to be a "movement" and in turn everybody got more gigs. So what you're describing has more to do with novelty than coolness.

2. In fact, scarcity has hurt a lot of interesting things that happen in music and art. With 6 billion people on earth, even small numbers can be strength; being alone is not always an advantage.

3. I suspect people will be able to tell the difference between someone showing up with a laptop and someone rigging up a bunch of old computers and game systems, meaning this thing is not a threat to live performing chip artists.

4. Elitism or inaccessibility tend not to translate to cool, so more power to you and your fresh copy of Chipsounds. 🙂 I mean, seriously, if someone is being a snob, that's not cool. I know CDM and its readers have been accused of snobbery, but I think we're just passionate about stuff. If you want to be intentionally aloof and inaccessible, then that definitely counts as snobbery. I'm sure we all have our moments, but I think that's avoidable.

@chad… very interesting point… I have always had a particular fondness for the sounds of these chips, but have not had the technical know how and time to actually buy/learn to use the hardware. There is a kind of romanticism with the die hard chip tune makers who actually burn their tunes to carts. I don't think that craft or the coolness of that will ever go away. I'm just very pleased to finally have access to a very similiar pallette of sounds. I could care less if because of this plugin, these sounds will make their way into a pop hit. With regards to the whole "snob derision" notion… 2 things… 1. show me someone who can tell the difference between this plugin and the real mccoy and they may have the right to criticise it 2. New tools always raise the bar and are no match for talent,creativity and vision. But people get scared when new tools and or features come out… digital djing, Melodyne DNA… and if you haven't heard of "pad cycling" you should see what people are saying about that on the forums. There are always snobs, scenesters and haters, most of them are scared of being shown up. I for one am going home today and am going to create the 8 bit song that I've always wanted to but never had the tools to do so.

Nice article! Surely some will find this lame or even 'wrong' but I'm not one of them. Still, I think it's understandable that people who are passionate (and subculturally protective, so to say) feel the need to show their disapproval. Communities are also defined through exclusion, as we all know.

Maybe the expanded context of the soundchip-registers inevitably makes the composer experiment less with details, as is encouraged when using more minimalistic platforms and interfaces. For me, I always believe in maximising the shit out of a platform, and I hope this is what people will use Chipsounds for, and not mimick what's already been done 100000 times.

I hope chipmusic will continue to decrease in 'coolness' so people will start listening to the music instead. 🙂

shamburglar

@goto80 Amen.

dyscode

Chipsound started to be my most anticipated product in 2009, since I first read of it in the Plogue Forum (being and avid Bidule user).

My bet is, this will be loved even among 8bit hardware users, since Chipsound emulates it the RIGHT WAY. It´s not a simeple rip off with some lame samples (like Titan), this things inspires to cover new ground.

But 8bit sound is inevitably bound to go the way of the MS-20, TB303, TR808/909.

After the hype is over we see what it´s really worth.

Of course I am not waiting to buy it until then.

@goto80

totally! 🙂

John

I'm not clear about something: Chiptune emulators and softsynths have been around for quite a while, including in VST plug-in format. What distinction places David's work apart from the rest and thus warrants the above rhetoric that this is some kind of new "breakthrough"? It's certainly evident that he's put in quite a bit of work, so I'm genuinely curious if, aside from collecting all the different chips together and creating an attractive gui, there's an audible difference as well?

@John: There's a difference both in sound and programmability, not to mention range. An emulator or two has actually been quite good, but many of the emulators simply approximate the instruments. Where samples were used, they were often needed; some things can't be as easily modeled (like a failing sound chip). The quality and variety here are really unparalleled.

Of course, some of this depends on your aims. For gaming purposes, and even for creative purposes many of those other options are just fine (and the SID, at least, has gotten some superb reincarnations). But if it's sound accuracy you want, and you want access to this many instruments, I don't think anything matches Chipsounds.

I try to offer both the limited resolution and the unlimited resolution of each chip while making sure digital aliasing is minimal (that last part is often the most overlooked facet of typical chip VSTs and console emulators).

Also all chip models follow the same usage workflow logic and can benefit from the built in arpeggiator and wave sequencer, etc.

You can experiment in mixing and matching different voices from different chips, and create your own if you dare (using the underlying SFZ 2.0 synths/sampling engine)

Right, I did forget to mention that ARIA support SFZ 1.x and 2.0, so you do get a standard and open interchange format for patches. Linuxsampler is also adding SFZ2 support (which in turn supports other OSes, despite the name), so you can invest in the hard work done by David and Plogue on ARIA, but you also don't have vendor lock, as you would with proprietary-only file support.

aidan

anyone interested in building a (relatively) simple CV synth module using the "famous" SN76477 chip check this out:

Very cool! Just one thing: the pic heading up this blog post is of an original (rubber-keyed) ZX Spectrum, but that computer doesn't feature any of the emulated chips that are in chipsounds. The original Spectrum had only a 1-bit 'beeper' that could be modulated to create sounds/music. So to make a beeping tone, you would have to use the CPU to quickly oscillate the beeper 'on' and 'off'. The AY chip wasn't incorporated until the ZX Spectrum 128 came out.

@LdC: Doh… of course, that's a 48k, which pretty as it may be indeed lacks the AY. Typical American mistake on my part. 🙂 We were surrounded by Apple, Tandy, TI, IBM, Commodore, Atari, not so much Sinclair. Will fix that shortly. (Anyone with a macro lens and a 128k out there? Heheh….)

I have countless 8 bit related sample libraries, LSDJ, MIDINES, QuadraSID and I've always loved how it all sounded but it was always a huge hassle to use (some would say this is part of the charm).

I've been playing with the Plogue Chiptunes all day and I'm in love with it. This tops all the stuff mentioned above. Seriously. I get the sounds I'm after without the technical challenges that diminish creativity.

Thank you x100

Best $75 I've spent all year.

It's perfect as is, but an extra super bonus would be more drum stuff (both synthesized and sampled)

I should add this quote to our site, no wait, ill press a tshirt with it 🙂

cheers

Aaron

8bitpeoples have been doing this sort of thing (free) for years and sharing their code and resources. Unfortunately at the moment their R&D page is down due to redesign. If you don't already know of them you should hit up google.

@Aaron: Oh, yes, for the record, David (at least to me) has been entirely upfront about the resources he used, and sharing his own discoveries about the few chips that weren't documented. So, while ARIA and Chipsounds are commercial, proprietary products, the work being done on these chips is something he's absolutely been sharing. And I think that is important, that the exploration of these chips themselves remains something that engages the community.